Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Book Review: A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh

*sigh* I was so hoping to love this one. I don't remember if I had added this to my TBR before or after reading Leah's review, but either way her review upped my expectations and excitement a lot. Hate turned love romance, historical setting, so much of this was calling my name.

Unfortunately, I read Lord Fenton's Folly before I read A Matter of Class and the former must have been heavily inspired by the latter. I felt like I was reading a rehash of a story I already read. That isn't a total dealbreaker (let's face it, I'm the type of reader that has no problem reading the same story over and over...as my Tudor, Arthurian, and Wars of the Roses reading list can attest), but the insubstantial characters did nothing to capture my interest.

It's kind of hard to get invested in a story when the only thing it has going for it is a romance with a plot I've already read and characters for which I can't muster up a care. The final blow was the fact that the book it so reminds me of is not one I particularly enjoyed, so my associated feelings were doing this story no favors.

My overall impression? A lukewarm meh.

It's a shame, because I feel like I probably would have enjoyed A Matter of Class much more had I not read Lord Fenton's Folly first. I don't think I ever would have loved it, but I probably would have liked it more. Oh well. It's funny how an experience with a book can be so affected by previous reading adventures.

2 comments:

Noooo!!! I'm so sorry you didn't love this one! I do think previous books can certainly affect how we feel about future novels - I'm still super new to historical romance (this was my first Mary Balogh!) so I think a lot of the tropes/twists are going to be fresh and exciting...whereas a few recently highly-praised thrillers I've read have been seriously underwhelming (I am SO over unrealiable narrators) just because I've seen the "it was the narrator all along" reveal countless times.